Whether an organization is selling a product or service or is collecting past due payments, a major challenge that is encountered on a daily basis is simply contacting parties (e.g., customers) for these purposes. This is especially true in light of the limited resources and opportunities many of these organizations face in attempting to contact parties (e.g., accounts). For instance, a contact center typically has only a set number of agents available at any given time to field outbound calls made to accounts as well as a set amount of capacity to place such calls. In addition, a contact center may be limited with respect to the number of attempts the center can make at trying to contact a particular account. For example, many contact centers face regulations that have been put into place limiting the number of attempts these centers can make during a time period to contact a particular account (e.g., individual) for collection purposes.
Furthermore, organizations are not only faced with trying to contact parties, but they are also faced with trying to contact these parties at the right time. For instance, a contact center may place a call to an account and reach them on the phone however the person on the phone may be too busy to talk at that time. Therefore, although the contact center was successful in reaching the person associated with the account, the end result was unsuccessful because the center was unable to conduct any business with respect to the reason the center was contacting the account in the first place.
Lastly, organizations are also faced with having to determine what form or channel of communication should be utilized when trying to contact parties. In today's world, most parties have more than one channel of communication that can be used to reach them. For instance, with respect to placing a phone call to an individual, the individual may have a home landline/wireline phone, a work landline/wireline phone, and a cell phone. At any particular instance, one of these phones may be a better channel to reach the particular individual than the other two phones. For example, a contact center may attempt to contact an individual at 9:00 a.m. on a Tuesday when the individual is normally at work. Therefore, the contact center may have a better chance of success at contacting the individual if the center places a call to the individual's work phone as opposed to the individual's home phone.
Accordingly, organizations faced with having to contact parties to conduct some type of business with these parties are often concerned with the best time to call these parties. A best time to call is considered the right time to call the right party and get the right outcome and/or result. This also holds true in instances involving other forms of communication such as, for example, text messaging and/or emailing parties. Therefore, a need exists in the art for better identifying the best time to contact a party, especially in instances in which the party has multiple channels of communication. It is with regard to this and other aspects that the present disclosure is presented.